In our increasingly fast-paced and busy lives, it can be hard to keep everything organized. Humans are great at using technology, working really hard, and multitasking. However, many of us are losing our aptitude for managing our basic daily needs, such as drinking enough water. One study has shown that most Americans don’t drink enough water, for example: 7% drink none while 36% drink between one and three cups per day. People often say that they forget to do tasks such as drinking water on busy days - that’s why there are 10 apps to remind you to be healthier, happier, and more successful.
Daily Water Tracker Reminder
Drinking enough water is crucial to living a healthy life. Not drinking enough has a lot of negative side effects including bad breath, fatigue, frequent illness, constipation, poor skin health, and sugar cravings which lead to weight gain. Since so many people struggle with drinking enough water, there are lots of apps to track water intake.
Among the best-rated free apps for this is the Daily Water Tracker Reminder. It lets you set a daily goal and will send reminders. You can enter exactly how much you have to drink to the millimeter. You can also set up the size of your favorite glass and add the amount easily with the click of a button. It is available for both iPhone and Android.
Vera: Plant Care App
Humans aren’t the only ones who suffer due to lack of water. Plants can be incredibly sensitive to water intake, and every type of plant has special needs. It makes sense that people who are too busy to remember to water themselves can also manage to neglect a plant to death. That is where Vera comes in!
This free app is amazing because you can add photos, a watering/fertilizing schedule, and the location of the plant. You can also add the date when you got a plant so that you can celebrate anniversaries. They are also planning on joining forces with Plant Identification to add this great function to the app. Vera is free to download and is available for both iPhone and Android.
MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter
Nutrition is another important aspect of human health. Malnutrition is a growing global problem. This does not just mean that people aren’t eating enough, rather that there are deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances in many people’s intake of energy and/or nutrients. With so much processed food in our diets, even a person with a healthy weight and reasonable eating schedule could be missing certain micronutrients or overindulging on others. Over a long period of time, any form of malnutrition can become critical.
MyFitnessPal is one of the best free apps to track everything including calories, nutrients, exercise, water intake, and more. During setup you can pick your weight goals: lose, maintain, or gain. Every day, you can enter your weight and the foods you eat out of a database of over 11 million items. You can even scan bar-codes of many foods to log them in faster. The app will also track your macronutrients and can be synced to a fitness watch to count steps towards the exercise. Download the free app for iPhone or Android.
Jefit: Workout Tracker
Most devices make it easy to track activities such as walks, runs and hikes. A popular free tracker for these is Map My Run, which is by the same company as MyFitnessPal. But while running is a great activity for weight management, strength training and anaerobic exercises play an important role, too. Jefit makes it easier to create a plan and track these exercises as well as focus on the specific muscles that you want to train.
Jefit offers popular workouts for weight loss, day splits, and bodybuilding. It features over 1,300 exercises to choose from with HD videos and full instructions on how to execute them properly. The app also offers easy tracking with rest timers based on your needs. Plus, you can analyze your workout patterns to improve and maximize results. You can download Jefit for free on Android or iPhone.
Monefy: Spending Tracker
While some people forget to eat breakfast or have a glass of water, others forget how they managed to spend their monthly paycheck in just a week. With more and more payments happening online as well as recurring automatically through autoships, it can be easy to lose track of spending. Whether you are trying to save for a big purchase or just wondering what your financial habits are, Monefy is a great free tool.
Monefy offers a visual graph of your spending based on categories such as groceries, rent, bills, car, travel, eating out, and more. The free version limits the categories that you can use, but it is still sufficient for basic tracking. The main screen shows your total budget, the amount you have spent in a given time period, and the percentage spent per category. It can be shocking to see just how much one Starbucks coffee a day can add up to. You can download Monefy for free on Android and iPhone. Plus, you can track across multiple devices.
ZenScreen: Screen Time Tracker
According to recent studies, the global average for time spent looking at a screen is six hours and 40 minutes per day. In the USA, the average amount of time spent daily using the mobile Internet is 2 hours 24 minutes, while 4 hours 7 minutes a day are spent on the Internet using a laptop, desktop, or tablet. For people with office jobs, these already scary numbers soar even higher. While many of us can’t escape the screen at work, we can all manage to spend less time on our phones, tablets, and laptops.
ZenScreen is among free apps that tracks your screen time. Although it is becoming more common for phones to have their own free trackers, ZenScreen has some great features. It goes beyond just telling you how much time you spend on your phone by analyzing the apps you use. It can give you a more detailed overview by telling you if your screen time is spent productively or for entertainment. You can also enter daily limits, calm nights, smart mornings and set digital time-outs for quiet time with family and friends. The smart mornings option, for example, ensures that you only spend 10 minutes checking notifications before taking a 20 minute break. Download ZenScreen for free on iPhone, Android and Chrome.
Headspace
The average human is often overstimulated in today’s busy world. Headspace helps to slow things down or simply help the user to take a mental break. Although there is a premium version full of useful extras, the free plan can be a great way to get used to taking time out of the day to sit, breathe, and just exist.
Headspace lets you set up alerts to remind you to take a few minutes for yourself. You can let it know what time to remind you, and it can give you some tips as well as prompts if you don’t know where to start. In addition to meditation, it can help you sleep. Right now, it is offering its premium version for free to those who are unemployed. You can download Headspace for Android and iPhone.
Sleep Cycle
Sleep is yet another thing that many people don’t take seriously enough. All-nighters and staying up late are often encouraged and considered productive. Most adults require seven or eight hours of sleep per night to feel alert and well-rested. Getting less sleep can cause many health problems including weight gain and headaches. Plus it severely limits brain function. According to statistics, 35% of adults don’t get enough sleep while 20% of teenagers sleep less than 5 hours a night.
Sleep Cycle is a great way to track how much you sleep, and it even offers a special alarm to wake you up at the right time. You can choose to set the alarm during a specific time period so that Sleep Cycle can decide when best to wake you up based on your REM cycle. For example, you can tell the app to wake you up between 6 and 7AM. It will then wake you during a lighter stage of sleep so that you wake up feeling fresh instead of groggy. Download Sleep Cycle on Android, iPhone or Huawei.
DrinkCoach: Alcohol Tracking
It can be easy to have a few too many drinks when you’re out at a party or at home during the weekend. The DrinkCoach app is a great tool for people who want to track or change their drinking habits. It offers a drinking risk test and lets you set reminders, track drinks, keep a hangover diary, and set goals as well as share your stats with others. It is also extremely discreet, doesn’t require logging in, and there are no in-app purchases.
DrinkCoach is a free and easy way to keep an eye on your drinking. It can show you patterns, help you track the amount of drinks that you can have without suffering from hangovers, plus it can help you to be healthier. The app also offers a confidential, string-free test to find out if your drinking is considered risky. You can Get DrinkCoach for iPhone as well as Android.
nTask: To Do App
A big productivity tip is to create a list of tasks, long-term as well as short-term, that help you to achieve your goals. While there are plenty of note-taking apps, it can be hard to stay on top of tasks without reminders and a more organized system. nTask is a great way to make lists, collaborate with others, and feel great checking items off your list.
nTask takes list-making even further and helps you schedule as well as prioritize certain tasks. It can help you with budgets related to tasks and record the amount of time spent on certain activities. It is an extremely thorough way to track your time, organize your tasks, and see what you can accomplish. Download nTask for free for Android and iPhone.
It can be hard to juggle all our daily tasks, goals, and responsibilities. Sometimes we can even forget to do simple things such as drinking water, eating healthy food, and getting enough sleep. These basic self-care actions are so vital to our health and success in all areas of life. Modern technology can be an obstacle to achieving some of these goals, but it can also be the solution. Take advantage of the free apps out there to track your health, finances, tasks, and everything in between.
Photos: Shutterstock / Edited by: Martina Advaney
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